Today was the first decent day in ages, so I went for a walk up through the farms near our home, and I came back with a bag full of oyster mushrooms. I would have walked right by them too, was it not for a large old clump of them lying on the ground, made me look for where it came from. They are commonaly found on beeches, or oaks, but there were three large clumps of them on a dead part of a large sycamore. We recently discovered an excellent mushroom stew recipe in the Hairy Bikers Vegeterian cookbook, this lot will be enough for three meals for four.


cap from bellow

spores under microscope

spores under microscope

The cylindrical spores are quite hard to locate under the microscope due to being translucent (they are inamyloid, and smooth). Both the cellular wall and the innards glow in KOH, though what glows most at any given time depends on the focus plane. This bunch averaged 9.7 x 4.1 microns (Q 2.18 - 2.55).